1．Short Story Competition
　　※ We want your writing!
　　Think you can write a winning story? Enter the 17^th Annual Newtown Library Short Story Competition for your chance to win 1, 000. The three winning entries (作品) will also be published in the New town Times.
　　※Prizes
　　1^stPlace:A check for ＄l, 000 and publication in the Newtown Times.
　　2^nd Place: Publication in the Newtown and ＄300 in book tokens (书券).
　　3^rd Place: Publication in the Newtown Times and ＄150 in book tokens.
　　※ How to Enter
　　Send your stories by post to the Newtown Public Library, 45 High Street, Newtown, or come by and hand it in person.
　　You can enter as many stories as you like!

　　Your entry must be your own work and unpublished at the time of submission. We look forward to reading your work!

2．　　Recently the French government passed a law in order to change the face of France's cities. The law states that the roofs (屋顶) of all new buildings in the downtown (闹市区) of cities must be covered in part with either plants or solar panels (太阳能板).
　　So, why are these so-called rooftop gardens useful? First of all, they will help cut the amount of energy which is needed for heating and cooling the buildings in summer and winter. The plants on green roofs will also help produce pleasant air, thus cleaning the polluted city air. The soil used to grow the plants will also help hold rainwater. This will make problems such as the flooding (洪水) less possible. In addition, these rooftop gardens will give birds a place to nest. And of course they will create new community areas in cities where space is limited.
　　French environmentalists (环境学家) wanted the law to state that plants should completely cover the roofs of all new buildings in France. However, as a first step, the government decided to limit the law's power so that only the buildings in the downtown would be changed. The government also suggested giving businesses the choice. That's to say, they could choose to fit solar panels on to their roofs to get their own power or just grow plants.
　　France is now one of many countries, including Germany, Australia and Canada, that use green roofs in cities to lower their bad effect on the environment.

3．　　Taking a walk every day is good for your health. But there's one simple mistake that could be putting your life at risk.
　　Almost 137, 000 pedestrians went to hospital with car accident﹣related injuries in 2017, and 5, 977 died in such accidents, according to the CDC (Center for Disease Control). In other words, one pedestrian died because of accidents every 88 minutes.
　　Luckily, there are some steps you can take to stay safe on foot. First, always use a sidewalk if there is one available, but if not, you're supposed to go toward the traffic. "It's best to walk in the direction of oncoming traffic, " walking expert Judy Heller says, "Walkers need to look out for the traffic, and always follow the walking rules of the road. "
　　Simply walking against traffic instead of with it cut the risk of getting hit by a car by an average of 77 percent. Why such a big difference? Well, if you walk the same direction as you would drive, the cars closest to you are coming from behind. That means you'd need to expect the driver to see you and react if they're coming up too close. If the driver is not careful enough, you could end up injured ﹣ or worse. On the other hand, when you're walking against traffic, you can see the cars coming toward you. Facing the traffic lets you see danger coming and get out of the way if necessary, and you aren't putting your life in the hands of every driver who passes.
　　Next time you go for a walk or run, face traffic to get the most happiness from your daily walk.

4．　　Nowadays, many music fans listen to songs not from records or CDs but directly from the internet. This is called streaming(流), and it allows people to listen to what seems like countless songs. But how exactly it works?
　　The largest music﹣streaming website, Spotify, began in Sweden in 2008. It spread to other countries as some big music companies agreed to let Spotify users stream their songs. In return, Spotify gives the companies some money.
　　Spotify users have a lot of ways to choose what songs they listen to. They can search for songs by artist or title. Many streaming services allow people to sign up for free accounts(账号). however free accounts are usually limited in some way. For example, you might not be able to listen to every songs you choose. Or you have to listen to advertisements. To avoid these, users can pay for a subscription(订阅).
　　Streaming music over the Internet also requires a lot of data. This means that if a user has a slow connection, their music might pause, skip ahead or stop completely. In order to solve this problem, Spotify uses different ways to avoid overworking its servers (服务器). It stores some information on the user computer. And it sometimes sends songs from the computers of their users rather than from servers.
　　There are some disadvantages to music﹣streaming services. For one thing, people are only renting music, not buying it. This means if they stop their subscription to the service, they cannot listen to music on the website. Also artists generally don't get much money from steaming services. If users want to support their favorite artists, they're better off just buying CDs.▲ , streaming makes it easier to discover new music and enjoy a wide kind of songs.
　　Streaming is convenient and inexpensive, and it offers a huge choice for songs. It is likely to develop new services for users to enjoy in the near future.

5．　　The science behind giving good gifts
　　Research shows that giving a bad gift hurt your relationships. So how can you be sure you pick something your receiver will love? Psychologists may have the answer.
　　(1)      
　　Traditionall the value of a gift shows the importance of a relationship. How much does a giver expect to spend on the gift? It depends on how well they know each other and if they are friends or not. Choose a right one among several choices.
　　(2)      
　　So why not choose an expensive and special gift to make the receiver happy? One study found that the more expensive a gift was, the more givers expected receivers to value it. But receivers didn't think so. In fact, they didn't connect the price with the value.
　　(3)      
　　When givers give gifts, they hope to see the smile on the receiver's face right in that moment. But what receivers care about is how much value they're going to get from that over a longer time period. A receiver may actually love it, since it's a gift that can be enjoyed often over time.
　　(4)      
　　Don't just want to send a gift that is special. Sometimes something that many people have can be exactly what someone wants. So are those common gifts what your friend loves? Don't avoid giving a popular one just because you want your gift to be the only one of its kind.
　　(5)      
　　If you have nothing in common, though, the psychologist Dunn suggests just asking the receivers what they want. Research has shown that spending more does not always mean a good gift. People want to be creative to surprise the receivers, but the better gift will be whatever the receivers want.

6． 　　Late that night, we started our final part of the climb. Nervously we carried on after a short rest. Everyone looked (1)      . Outside of the tent it was totally black. It was just after (2)      . Snow was falling. It was freezing.
　　The group climbed silently through deep snow. I could not think. The height of the mountain was playing tricks on my (3)      . I tried to keep concentrated (集中思想) by watching my feet and counting to ten (4)      .
　　People around me were just standing still as they tried to get (5)      breath. I tried to encourage them to keep walking. My friend looked at me (6)      . He was really tired. He kept trying to lie down and go to sleep. (7)       he did, he would freeze to death. I told him to keep moving. He climbed on. When I checked my (8)      , I saw, with surprise, that I'd been walking for three hours already. I felt as if I was fighting every step of the way. All I wanted to do was turn round and go down — (9)       I must reach the top!
　　I began to wonder if I was not (10)       enough. I was losing my mind. My breathing was very rapid. Each (11)       that I took made me more and more dizzy (晕眩的). Someone told me we had another hour and a half to go.
　　I forced myself to (12)      . I had to concentrate really hard, because one careless step could make me (13)      .
　　Then I saw Gilman's Peak up ahead of me. Someone at the top was telling me to make one last effort. The sun was beginning to (14)       above the clouds. I climbed up the last few meters and suddenly I (15)       I'd done it! I was there! I was at the top of Africa!

7．　　Is a Crow (乌鸦) Smarter Than a Seven-Year-Old?
　　When we think of intelligent animals, we usually think of dogs, cats, and apes. But do you know that a crow is among (1)            (smart) animals in the world?
　　Crows have memories and they are able to imagine the future. This helps them solve problems (2)            an ape (猿). They even use tools sometimes. A crow can hold a tiny bar in its mouth and use it (3)            (get) at tasty insects.
　　It's normal to think a crow in a tree hardly (4)            (pay) any attention to you. You might be wrong, though. Crows can remember human faces. Some scientists believe that they can even tell other crows (5)            a human is friendly or not.
　　Since twenty years ago, some scientists (6)            (study) how intelligent crows are compared to (7)            (human). They found that crows were able to solve a puzzle just as (8)            (good) as a 7 year-old human. In another test, a crow solved (9)            eight-stage puzzle within three minutes.
　　(10)            , if anyone ever calls you "bird brain, " be sure to thank him or her for the praise.

18．假如你是李华, 你收到美国笔友Peter 的邮件, 请你阅读后回复, 词数80左右.